SCRIPT (the Shepherd and Wedderburn Centre for Research in Intellectual Property and Technology) was established at the University of Edinburgh in 1998 as a centre of excellence in the disciplines of intellectual property law (IP) and information technology law (IT). Initially the purpose was to bring together and provide a coherent focus for work that was on-going at the University of Edinburgh, in particular within the School of Law, from which were drawn the four founding co-directors (Edwards, Laurie, McQueen and Waelde). The Directors found that studying and teaching IP and IT law, and medical jurisprudence and ethics, not in isolation but as inter-related phenomena, and not just in their legal but also their social, ethical, cultural and commercial context, generated innovative cross-cutting research of the highest quality (see http://www.law.ed.ac.uk/script/home.htm). As a result, SCRIPT emerged as a pioneer centre in the UK. It was on the basis of the successes of SCRIPT that AHRC funding was secured in 2002.

Our research is about the synergetic relationship between law, technologies, commerce and society in the widest possible sense. As well as IT and IP, we and our associates are concerned with the adjunct areas of biotechnology, genetics and medical jurisprudence and ethics; law and artificial intelligence, including the distribution of legal knowledge via the Web; regulation of electronic commerce, the Internet, media, and the information society; we also consider law as it affects information management and cultural production and archiving. We believe that our centre is unique in the UK in having the personnel, the connections and the expertise to analyse and cross-synthesise research in these diverse fields, as well as to produce and disseminate new research which is targeted to meet the needs of industry, academe and society.

Our Phase 2 Centre will move beyond the project-driven approach of Phase 1 to embrace fully its role as an international research hub with clear thematic focus on the creation and development of new paradigms for the legal characterisation of, and response to, the demands and potentials of new technologies.

This will involve more direct collaborations towards policy and practice-driven ends, not only with other academic lawyers, but also with scholars from other disciplines, policy-makers, practitioners, business and civil society. Phase 1 revealed the enormous potential which exists for such work within the UK, Europe and the world beyond. Phase 2 will translate this potential into actuality, providing collaborative and interdisciplinary, yet practical, scholarship addressing new research questions of economic and social importance and visibly affecting law, policy and practice. In particular it will help to develop a critical mass of scholars working in the relevant fields. As a leading centre, it will be ever more attractive to overseas visiting fellows and research postgraduates (especially developing countries), and its downstream projects of increasing import to research funders. Visit the other parts of the Centre website for more details on the particular projects to be undertaken and details about applying for scholarships and visiting fellowships: http://www.law.ed.ac.uk/ahrc

The Centre also offers cutting-edge courses in its research fields, and a unique distance learning Masters of Laws (eLLM) was launched in September 2005. The postgraduate programme is taught via a Virtual Learning Environment created specifically for the tuition of law via the Internet. Course covers copyright and related rights, industrial property, international intellectual property, managing intellectual proeprty, forensic computing and electronic evidence, information technology law, law & medical ethics, and developing countries & technology. If you would like more information, or to apply for this programme, then please visit our dedicated site here: http://www.law.ed.ac.uk/distancelearning/